Reunion!

I continue to be flabbergasted over the fact that it's been 35 years since my class walked the stage to graduate high school. What is this aging thing, anyway? Inside I still feel about 25, although the outside is beginning to show a bit of weathering, to be sure.

The Phillipsburg High School Class of 1977 has, always and ever, considered themselves to be special. For a group of 84 students in a small northwest Kansas town, we had a wonderful mix of farmers, athletes, smarties and artists - virtually all of whom knew, conversed, and built relationships with each other. We had just the right amount of kids in our class - enough that a huge number of the class found success in various student activities, and small enough so that everyone knew everyone, keeping the "clique" factor to a minimum.

We met in 1982 at the five-year mark and again at the ten-year mark, each time enjoying each other's company and comparing notes between the locals who stayed in Pburg and the wanderers who scattered to various cities around the US. By our 20-year reunion, we were firmly adults and had begun to simply enjoy life and each other during our weekends catching up.

We were all expecting a 25-year shindig, but something happened and our "locals" decided that we could all be recognized during the annual all-class alumni banquet that's normally held around Memorial Day. For our special class? Pshaw! We didn't meet that year, nor did we meet at the 30-year mark.

As I was winding my way through the Great Recession (Atlanta, then Austin) in 2009, I finally decided that I would exert my "authority" as senior class president and DEMAND a 35-year reunion. As I told classmates about a year ago, if we didn't get one more reunion in, our next one (the 50th?) might have half of us in walkers!

Great initial help from Tina Pool, and later from Lisa Holzwarth, Bob Dusin, Barry Yoxall, Mick Heisterman and others, resulted in an 18-month push culminating in a fantastic 35-year reunion over the Labor Day weekend.

Phillipsburg, like so many county seat farming towns of the plains, is down in population. When we were in school, Pburg had 3,000 people and 400 in the high school. Today, it's down to 2,000 population with about 200 in the high school. A friend let me know that, when we toured the schools as part of the reunion, we'd see twice the facilities for half the students. He wasn't kidding.

Still, it's this small-town school system that produced our class - and about a third of us went on to successful careers in education or training. Had I had children, I know I would have seriously considered raising them in Phillipsburg - the experience was, and is today, vastly more kid-friendly than the 6,000-student schools in Denver.

Knowing what we owed to our teachers, we invited them to attend our Saturday evening get-together, and we were delighted that some of them were able to join us. (Remember, they are 35 years older too!) Zella Roeder, our 8th grade teacher who pushed us but always treated us as adults; Dave Koelsch, our junior high football coach who provided me with a great role model just a couple of years after my dad died; Francis Karlin, one of the most dynamic junior high teacher personalities EVER; Don Cassatt, a true genius who created a special math program for four of us our senior year (AP programs before AP programs were invented)...these and so many other teachers gave us inspiration, encouragement and acceptance. We owe them everything.

 

Our class is now on the backside of 50 and holding up well, if I do say so myself. We remembered the eight classmates who have gone on, our non-graduating classmates and teachers who have passed; but we also celebrated the vibrant life in all of those who were able to attend. We had fun - the essence of life, the very reason to breathe.

We've made commitments to do this again, sooner rather than later. Hopefully, others will step up for the 40th year reunion - Tina and I did a mountain of work, including accounting, planning, hundreds of phone calls and letters, convincing some of our classmates to come, etc. I don't think I'd want to try to turn this around again in a year or two. But maybe in five.

It was so very, very good to see the 35 classmates who were able to come to Phillipsburg.

For many more pictures and postings, check out our class Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/phsclassof77/